Blood sugar self-monitoring is usually carried out several times daily as part of an insulin treatment regimen to control diabetes. It is therefore desirable to minimize the number of handling steps the patient is required to carry out and to ensure a relatively painless and highly reliable blood sugar measurement. Disposable measurement articles are used for hygienic reasons. In conventional blood sugar measurements, samples are generated by finger pricking with lancets and the measurement is carried out on separate detection elements. This requires a large number of handling steps by the patient which can result in errors. Further disadvantages are blood volumes that are too large, non-robust sample transfer procedures, and lack of integration that requires the patient to organize and handle separate devices and disposable supplies.